


take me with you when you go

by Zofiecfield



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, Feelings, Fluff, Happy Ending, Old Age, i promise it is super soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29268567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zofiecfield/pseuds/Zofiecfield
Summary: Jamie is determined to keep Dani company, even after death.  Fueled by tea and Owen's lemon cake, she finds a way.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	take me with you when you go

**Author's Note:**

> _A note for any who need it: This fic contains references to death of old age._

_And the history books forgot about us_  
_And the Bible didn't mention us_  
_And the Bible didn't mention us, not even once_

-Regina Spektor, “Samson”

Jamie feels the ending as it approaches. Well past eighty years into this life, she begins to hear the bells as they toll for her. 

The heavy work of the garden has stripped her joints of their ease, bone on bone now as she moves through the world. And the heavy work of grief and longing and love and loss has thinned her more and more as the years passed.

So, when the ending makes its presence known, just a few steps behind her, she is not surprised and she is not afraid. She carried herself through the world, hefted all the weight it laid across her shoulders and met its demands. It is only right, she thinks, that she should acquiesce one final time and accept the ending as it comes.

She is not surprised and is she is not afraid.

But as the days pass and she readies herself for the end, something begins to grow within her, some snarling thing that stirs her blood and leaves her agitated and unsettled. 

She knows beasts like this, knows it is best to lie in wait until they make themselves known. So, she waits.

Jamie wakes one morning with an arm wrapped around her waist and soft breath on the back of her neck, as she’s woken thousands of times before. And like every one of those other mornings, the arm and the breath and the warmth fade before she can grasp them, before she can beg them to stay. 

In that beat, the heartbreaking one between together and alone, the beast pounces at last. A dark and terrible thought, it catches her, unarmed, and tears through the heart of her.

Panic rises, unmitigated, her heart thundering an unsteady rhythm in her chest and her vision dimming.

When she dies, when the world pulls the curtain, she will be gone. And Dani will stay behind, alone.

It is a thought she’s had before, one she’s turned over in her mind so many times it is smooth and worn at the edges. But now, as the dusk comes and the clock bears down on her, the thought and its shadow feel sharp and brittle and new. 

To be without Dani is one thing. That has been Jamie’s burden to bear all these years. A price she agreed to pay with a pinkie promise and a tender heart fifty years ago. 

But to go and leave Dani alone now, without anything or anyone left in this world to whisper her name in the darkness and call her home. That is another thing entirely. That is burden that would be borne by Dani, who has borne too much already. 

Jamie rails against the thought of it, violent and urgent, as the snarling beast bears down.

_No._

Jamie rolls to her back and squeezes Dani’s pillow to her chest, bracing herself like a fracture, forcing air in.

The panic subsides slowly, until it is only a dulled edge to her periphery and a knot in her gut.

And then, as she’s done every damn day of her life, she makes a plan, and she takes a step, and she finds a way to move from one moment to the next.

Jamie packs a small suitcase the next day and heads to London, to be near the only other person in this world who came anywhere close to knowing Dani as she had.

“Jamie!” Owen cries as she enters his small restaurant the next afternoon. He chuckles in his surprise and delight as he draws her into his arm. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Warmed by the familiar embrace, Jamie’s heart settles for a moment. “Thought it was time for a visit, that’s all. Hadn’t eaten one of your shite sandwiches in a while.”

Owen grins, taking her hands and squeezing them fondly as he steps back to take her in. “It’s so good to see you. Go sit. I’ll be out in a bit.”

He pats her arm and sends her off towards a table tucked by the fireplace in back, just beside the framed portrait of Hannah, which has hung in honor and love in every space he’s occupied since the day he buried her.

Jamie spares a moment to greet her, lingering over the knowing smile and the ever-patient eyes. _Hannah_ , who deserved a better end.

The restlessness and longing creeps back up Jamie’s spine, setting her skin clammy and her heart back on its chaotic rhythm. 

She settles herself at the table and takes several deep breaths which do little to calm. With shaking hands, she pulls a leather-bound notebook from her bag and digs for a pen, hoping a little forward action will steady her. 

She opens the notebook and sets the pen to the page, but the pen quivers and the page is too white, and already she knows this is not enough. 

Her breath catches in her chest, and for the hundredth time in the past few days, panic claws at her.

“Ma’am?”

She jerks from her thoughts. A young waiter stands at her elbow nervously, hand poised on her shoulder to check her for signs of sanity and safety. 

“Sorry,” she breaths, shaking herself a little to force the moment into motion again. “A pot of tea, please. And a cheese sandwich. Make that two. It’s been a long day already.”

The waiter nods and hurries off, glancing once over his shoulder, concern still evident on his face.

Jamie closes the notebook and rests the pen beside it. She leans back in the chair and closes her eyes, letting the heat of the fire wash over her and willing her lungs to do their damn job for a little longer.

The food arrives soon enough, and the tea is hot, the scald of it grounding her for a bit. God bless a good cup of tea.

Owen arrives not long after, tugging off an apron as he comes. Ninety-three last month, and still, he bustles around the place like he’s all of twenty-five. 

He brings two thick slices of lemon cake, and they talk lightly as old friends while they eat, filling in the gaps between the last of their letters and the occasional phone call and the visit today.

His easy presence and the familiar chat soothe Jamie and, for a moment, she forgets why she’s here. For a moment, she forgets the clock is ticking.

Forgets, until Owen leans across the table conspiratorially, one palm warm across her wrist, and says, low, “Enough chat, now. Tell me why you’re here, Jamie, love. This isn’t just a visit, is it?”

Her heart plummets again, and her throat goes thick, but there’s no sense lying, no sense skidding across the truth, not anymore. She pushes out the words.

“I think my time is coming. I can feel it in my bones, like a vine on its last day of sunshine, just waiting for the night. I think I’m going soon.”

She says this, and knows it is not enough, knows she must go on, must voice it before the thoughts that have been rattling inside her for days now, violent, erupt. 

Owen says nothing. Just leaves the steadying weight of his palm where it lies and waits.

“Owen,” she says, and her voice is breaking already. She glances down at the notebook, with its stark pages and its unwelcoming air, then forces herself to go on. 

“I can’t stand the thought of leaving her here alone. No one to think of her, no one to remember her as she was, no one to carry her from one day to the next. No one to wait for her in case – in case she comes home.”

Her eyes tick down to the notebook, just once. 

“So, I thought, maybe, if I wrote it all down, if I put her and I side-by-side on the page, a bit of me could stay behind when I go. And she wouldn’t be so alone after. So someone would still say her name when I’m gone.”

She sags back into her chair. The words take everything from her, leaving her wilted and empty, save for the ever-present agitated thrum of her heart in its cage.

Owen looks at her softly, not an ounce of pity in his gaze. His losses are not the same as her own; they are their own breed of sorrow. But there is and always has been an overlap between them, hers and his, twinned wounds with an overlay of the world and its cruelty. 

He nods once, understanding more than anyone else could, and pushes the notebook towards her. “Get to it then. I’ll bring more tea.”

It is a story she’s only told once, to anyone but Dani, anyway. So, she begins there, with the first telling, at a wedding, years and years ago.

Once she starts, the words flow readily, almost eager, jostling to vie for their place on the page.

As they bleed from her, ink from her veins, the steadiness returns to her hands and her heart assumes a quieter cadence.

The story takes her days to write, days blending into weeks of the scratch of pen to page. 

Owen sees to it that the table is always open, the tea never runs dry, and the sandwiches are toasted dark, just like she likes.

The young waiter from the first day hesitates beside her one day, as he delivers a bowl of soup, and offers her his laptop. _It’s no bother, really._

She considers, for a moment, trying to explain that some words have to be dug up with calloused hands, planted and pruned and tended. Some words carry too much weight for a set of plastic keys. Some words demand pitch black ink and a sacrifice before they’ll settle on the page. 

But instead, she just smiles warmly at the waiter and thanks him for the offer, making a mental note to leave a hefty tip with Owen for him at the end of the day. 

In the end, after copious revisions, the story sits before her, as finished as a story like that can ever be. It begins with a wedding, then tilts back in time, tumbling until it arrives back at the start.

Once finished, she does not read it again, knowing it by heart already, in the truest sense of the phrase. 

Inside the front cover, she writes, _This story is many things, but most of all, it is a love story._

And her heart is, for a moment, satisfied. 

Jamie wakes in the middle of the night, soft kisses pressed down her spine and warm palm resting on her stomach, punctuated by the chill of the gold band.

The touch is gone as quickly as ever, no less a dream than it ever is. 

She opens her eyes and in the darkness, she makes out the shape of the notebook, resting on the nightstand where she’d set it down as she prepared for bed. 

She runs a finger down the cover, and in that moment, the truth steps from the shadow of all the years.

This is only notebook. A story, full of heft and power as stories are, but still, just a story. It is not Dani, and it is not Jamie, and it is not enough.

In that moment, she makes up her mind. Though in truth, she’d made up her mind fifty years ago and hadn’t waivered a day since.

“Off today, then? You’ve finished?” Owen asks the next morning, when she arrives with her suitcase in hand.

“Yes,” Jamie says, without hesitation. “One last cup of tea before I go?”

The duality of the statement is not lost on either of them.

She leaves, hours later, with tight hugs that are reluctant to end, knowing what is coming.

As they reach the front door, Owen tugs her back. 

“Do I get to read it, this story you’ve written?” he asks against her cheek, as he draws her in once more.

“You can keep it,” she says with a shrug as they part, digging out the notebook and handing it to him. “Read it, add to it, do with it what you like.”

Confusion blooms on his face, mixed in good amount with concern.

She smiles softly at him and smooths a thumb across his brow as she explains. 

“You see, I changed my mind. Thought I’d leave part of myself here with her, but as it turns out, that’s not enough for me. No, not enough at all.” 

There is no quiver in her voice, no broken edges or unsteady footing, as she says what she’s known all along, in some way or another. 

“The lake can have her body, and the dirt can have mine. But I’m taking the rest of her with me when I go. Me, her, us, as it’s always been.”

There is sorrow etched into his face as she kisses his cheek once and leaves for the last time. Sorrow, but the gentle sort that stretches across the years and comes into focus as endings near, tinged heavily with love and longing and a kindred heart.

The days pass, and she feels the end as it nears, deep in her bones. So, she uses what little time she has.

She collects them all, everything that’s left.

Every kiss, every tender touch, every sigh and every shiver. 

Every dance in bare feet late at night.

Every peal of laughter as the kitchen filled with smoke from another cooking disaster. 

Every whistle of the kettle, every cup of tea, cradled in palms. 

Every story whispered, every poem painted across skin.

Every promise made, every promise kept, every promise lost between the cracks of the world.

Every hurt, every sorrow.

Every little love, the ones spoken and the ones borne on fingertips and glances and small kindnesses.

Every memory she’s replayed a thousand times, and the ones she’s tucked up deep inside herself, too tender to touch.

She collects them all and binds them tightly to her. 

And then, she waits. 

Tends her plants on the windowsills, as she always has. Cups of tea and books she’s read a dozen times, their worn pages nearly family now. 

She passes the days softly.

Jamie wakes on the final morning, not long after time has ceased to tick for her, not long after the clock has turned its back, duties fulfilled and finished.

She wakes with an arm wrapped around her waist, the chill of the gold band against her skin, soft breath on the back of her neck.

She wakes and she waits for the customary fall. 

But the arm does not retreat, the soft breath turns to kisses, peppered down her spine. The hand slides along skin until the ring rests in tandem with its match.

And still she waits, though the heart of her has begun to shiver in anticipation, has begun to believe.

There is a murmur then, setting the baby hairs on the back of her neck rustling in its breeze. A voice she’s heard in ten thousand dreams and a hundred thousand memories. 

_Jamie, wake up. It’s time. Jamie._

She sucks in a breath and turns in the embrace, eyes still squeezed shut.

A chuckle, fingertips across her brow, smoothing the furrow found there. 

_It’s time. Open your eyes._

“It’s time? You’re sure?” Jamie asks, her voice cracking under the weight of the hope and relief, under the weight of ten thousand dreams on ten thousand mornings that left her empty and aching.

_Yes. Open your eyes._

So Jamie does.

Dani lies beside her, as she had the first night they fell into bed beside each other, youthful tangle of limbs. Soft smile blooming into a grin as Jamie takes her in, palms tracing her still familiar shape and testing the weight of her, deciding to believe.

“Dani,” Jamie breathes at last, in the final moment before her heart takes flight in glee and heady relief. “ _Dani_.”

As Jamie surges forward then, to join the tangle of limbs and the clash of teeth, she leaves behind the frame that carried her through this world. Ache bleeding from her limbs, time shedding from her until she collides with Dani as she had so many years ago.

The wool of Dani’s sweater feels friendly and familiar under her palms, under her teeth. The salt of Dani’s skin under the press of her lips and the drag of her tongue, just as it had been. Dani’s sigh and laughter as her fingers wind into unruly brown curls to pull Jamie closer. 

They lose themselves for a moment, swept away.

The world tugs at them, urges them to take their final bow and exit stage left, but for a moment, they ignore its pull. 

The world has demanded so much of them, it can wait a moment now.

At last, they part, but only just. 

“We should go,” Dani says.

Jamie nods. “It’s time.”

Jamie slips from the bed, and the world starts to lose its solidity, having held her long enough.

Dani rises to follow, but turns back, lingering for a moment at the bedside. 

As she has countless times before, Dani ghosts her fingertips along the silvers and grays that have graced that beloved head for years, then bends to hover a kiss across the wrinkled brow, now devoid of the weight it had carried. 

One final farewell to the body that had held Jamie when Dani could not. A tender _thank you_ to the frame that had given them both anchor when the world shifted beneath their feet.

She turns and finds Jamie watching her, eyes solemn now in gentle sorrow, the laughter gone.

Jamie reaches for her, sliding a palm from elbow to wrist, featherlight. Dani winds their fingers together and squeezes in return. 

“I missed you,” Jamie whispers as her voice breaks, just three little words, but they say far more than that.

“You did so well,” Dani says softly, the remembered ache of the time they can’t replace. “I was here the whole time, and I watched you as you fought for each new day, as you pushed forwards even when the world pushed back against you. I know you were hurting, all this time, all these years, and I wasn’t – I couldn’t – Jamie, I couldn’t share the load. But you did so well. Jamie, I –”

That is enough. They are both crying now, tears streaming down faces and soaking into the cotton and wool of their shoulders as they wrap each other up tightly in grateful arms.

The time that has passed can’t be rewound, no more than it could be hurried along as it happened.

There is no filling in the years that were left half empty, no erasing the heartache and grief.

But there will be new time now, time not bound by years or grief or longing.

Hand in hand, they leave.


End file.
